Highlights
2020 AIChE Annual Meeting
Prof. Sheikhi is chairing/co-chairing 3 sessions at the 2020 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Make sure to submit your abstracts before April 30th using this Link!
(1) Hydrogel Biomaterials (08B09)
(2) Biopolymers (08A03 )
(3) Thermochemical Conversion of Biomass (17016 )
Register here!
How Can Bio-Based Soft Materials and Biomaterials Impact Society?
Soaring population growth, imbalance supplies and demands, shortage of ready-to-use remedies, and urbanization have introduced unprecedented challenges to satisfying the world’s essential needs for water, healthcare, food, and energy. Designing new material platforms inspired by the following questions may take us one step closer to finding solutions to these needs:
1) How can natural bioproducts be micro-/nanoengineered to overcome the persistent bottlenecks of current synthetic materials?
2) How can the sophisticated structure-property relationships in nature be mimicked to address everyday life challenges?
Our Contributions
Our team endeavors are geared towards addressing some of the quintessential challenges of the 21st century in biomedicine and the environment by designing novel soft material platforms (e.g., hydrogels and colloidal systems) via micro- and nanoengineering techniques. In 2019, Dr. Amir Sheikhi founded the Bio-Soft Materials Laboratory (B-SMaL) at Penn State Chemical Engineering to develop transformative and/or translational bio-derived soft materials and biomaterials that can set the stage for the adoption of affordable, widespread technologies with immediate benefits for humans and ecosystems.
Our Bio-Soft Material Technologies
Microfluidic-Enabled Biomaterials
Biocolloids & Biopolymers
Biomimetic Materials
Colloidal Gels
Selected Publications
